Muscle building exercises without weights -
Since no special equipment is required, you can do bodyweight exercises just about anywhere. But you can also build muscle and strength doing bodyweight exercises.
If you're used to lifting super heavy at the gym, hefting barbells, or moving weight on machines, replicating that at home can prove somewhat difficult, says Alexis Colvin, M. But that doesn't mean you can't build muscle if you're limited to bodyweight exercises; it just means you'll have to switch up the way you typically train.
For you, that might mean moving through exercises much more slowly or upping the reps, sets, or timing of each move. So, whatever change it takes to challenge your muscles, that's the goal. And figuring out what works best for you or what tests your body that most?
Well, that'll take some trial and error. An advantage of doing bodyweight exercises is that you're performing functional, compound movements that let you focus on form without the added resistance.
You'll get stronger in movement patterns you use in everyday life, plus you'll work multiple joints and muscles at one time with exercises such as squats , push-ups , and lunges , says Dr.
You also work many smaller muscles, particularly when doing stabilizing exercises such as bird dogs, planks , and single-sided moves, she adds. These types of moves target your upper and lower body along with your core, challenging muscles you don't always work with weights.
Some research has compared loaded exercises with bodyweight moves, showing similar results in how much muscle the participants gained. For example, one small study comparing a loaded bench press to a bodyweight push-up demonstrated similar muscle gains in the pecs and triceps after an eight-week period.
Another small study on post-menopausal women at high risk for type 2 diabetes found that twelve weeks of high-intensity bodyweight interval training increased muscle mass to a similar extent as a combination of aerobic and resistance training. And, in yet another study, on the effects of no-load fitness training , one group did a series of elbow flexion exercises think: bicep curls with a heavy load, and the other did the exercises with body weight, making sure to maintain tension throughout the full range of motion.
The bodyweight group had a comparable increase in muscle size to the group with a heavy load. To help you understand exactly how bodyweight exercises can build muscle, though, it's important to know how your muscles get bigger in the first place. Building muscle mass — known in science as hypertrophy — involves challenging muscle tissue and increasing protein synthesis, which is the process of cells building new proteins, explains Molly Galbraith, C.
You can do this via exercise in three ways: creating mechanical tension, metabolic stress, or microtrauma. While most types of training will incorporate all three ways to induce hypertrophy — resulting in the biggest benefit plus, these systems tend to work together — different workout techniques may target one method more than the other, says Galbraith.
You don't need to design your workouts to focus on one or another, but it can be helpful to understand precisely how each method builds muscle. Mechanical tension typically comes into play during weightlifting.
You're loading the muscle with enough resistance to create tension, causing cellular and molecular responses that then lead to gains, says Galbraith.
Upping the number of reps and sets aka the total volume you do of each exercise can increase mechanical tension, too, which provides muscle-building benefits. This is also part of the science behind progressive overload.
Slowing down the eccentric action or downward phase of a move, such as when lowering into a squat, might also provide some extra tension. For some people, certain bodyweight exercises offer enough resistance on their own, such as a push-up or a pull-up.
That fiery sensation you feel when you're pulsing through squats, holding the bottom of a push-up, or finishing that final rep of sit-ups? That's a result of metabolic stress, which occurs when metabolites aka waste products that form as a result of exercise, such as lactate build up in the muscle tissue, explains Galbraith.
This causes hormonal, cellular, and growth factor reactions, offering another way to pump up your muscles. Specifically, it can increase anabolic hormone release such as testosterone and growth hormone, which stimulate protein synthesis , lead to cell swelling, and induce an increase in growth factors — proteins that can stimulate tissue growth by promoting cell reproduction.
This is when you get small tears in muscle tissue thanks to exercising — namely, resistance training. When this happens, your body responds by working to repair that damage, which jumpstarts muscle growth, says Galbraith. While any exercise can do this to your muscles squats, planks, deadlifts, you name it , new moves you haven't done before can also cause this microtrauma.
For example, a recent study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that a series of progressive push-up challenges resulted in notable strength gains in men after just four weeks. This was compared with a control group of people doing bench-press exercises.
If you're keen to accelerate your fitness journey, you could add some of the best adjustable dumbbells into your routine.
But if you're trying to get fit on a budget, these exercises offer an excellent place to start. We spoke to exercise physiologist Emma Holding to get some tips on the best bodyweight exercises and advice on how to do them. Emma Holding is an accredited exercise scientist, personal trainer, and strength and conditioning coach with the YMCA.
Emma specializes in female strength training, athlete development, and high performance training. Push-ups are great for upper body strength, as they build muscle in the shoulders, triceps, and chest. If you're doing them correctly, you should find that your core engages throughout the movement too.
Position yourself on all fours, with your hands just slightly wider than your shoulders and your legs stretched out behind you, balanced on your toes.
Keep your arms and legs straight. Straighten your arms to return to the starting position. Aim for sets of 10 push-ups each time. The plank exercise can strengthen both your spine and abdominal muscles, which is great for improving your posture and balance.
Aim to hold each plank for seconds, increasing your hold time as you build endurance. Start in the same position as your push-up, but this time place your forearms on the ground with your elbows below your shoulders. Tighten the core and keep your back straight as you hold the position, remembering to breathe.
Bodyweight squats are great for increasing lower body strength, but they can also help with mobility and improve your balance. It's a compound move, which means that it works a lot of different muscle groups. Stand tall with your feet hip-width apart and turn your feet slightly out.
Bend your knees and drop your hips to lower your body towards the ground, as if you were going to sit back into a chair.
We need to make them harder. One way to progress the air squat is to load up a bag with books and hold it in front of you. If you can read quickly enough, you could add a new speculative fiction novel to the backpack every week, making it gradually heavier.
When air squats become too easy, you can make them harder by jumping—jump squats. Your muscles will need to work harder to launch you into the air. Then, when you land, your muscles need to decelerate you. This is nice because you need to generate the force at the bottom of the range of motion when your quads and glutes are stretched.
When you grow too strong to train both legs at once, you can switch to doing split squats. You can make those split squats more difficult by raising your back leg up—the Bulgarian split squat.
If you can do 40 air squats, you may only be able to do a few pistol squats. The point is to work your quads, not to win a balance competition.
Finding good bodyweight alternatives to the deadlift is tricky because the whole point of the deadlift is to put a heavy load on your spine, traps, and spinal erectors. There are plenty of bodyweight deadlift variations that work your hips to some degree or another, but hardly any of them work the muscles in your posterior chain such as your spinal erectors.
The difference is that this is an isometric lift—no range of motion. No matter how hard you pull on the towel, it will not move. Isometrics that challenge your muscles in a stretched position are good for building muscle.
The towel deadlift is done with a deep hip angle, challenging your glutes and hamstrings in a stretched position. The other great thing about the towel deadlift is that it trains your entire posterior chain.
As you pull on the towel, your spinal erectors and mid-back muscles need to work just as hard as if you were pulling on a too-heavy barbell. And because you need to grip the towel, your forearm muscles get worked, too. The nice thing about pulling against a stationary object is that the bigger and stronger you get, the harder you can pull.
If you give each set your all, progressive overload is built right into the lift. When doing towel deadlifts, we recommend using burst reps. Pull as hard as you can for a few seconds, then release the tension.
Then pull as hard as you can for another few seconds. You can progress how many seconds you pull for, and you can adjust how many reps you do per set. For example:. The problem with the towel deadlift is that the range of motion is zero.
And as a general rule, we want to gain strength through a large range of motion. So, in addition to doing deadlift isometrics, we recommend including some other hip hinges, such as the hip thrust.
With the main movements, we recommend training pretty seriously. With the accessory and isolation lifts, you can approach it much more casually. There are a ton of different accessory and isolation lifts that you can add to your bodyweight muscle-building routine.
Here are some of our favourites. You could simply do those 4 exercises three times per week. You can do that with 3 full-body workouts per week or split it up into more workouts.
For example, if you wanted 6 short workouts, you could do the lower-body lifts one day, and the upper-body lifts the next. From there, you can increase training volume as needed or desired. Everyone responds best to slightly different training volumes.
And, of course, this is just a loose recommendation. Feel free to customize your routine as you see fit. Bodyweight training can be a bit finicky, and as you get stronger, the pain of doing compound lifts in higher rep ranges can make it downright brutal. Thus, at some point, most people decide to invest in some free weights.
Also, keep in mind that some bodyweight lifts, such as the push-up and chin-up, easily rival the big free-weight lifts, making bodyweight training great for building a big chest and upper back. Our muscles grow best when we train them 2—4 times per week, so as a good default, we recommend doing each of the movements three times per week.
You can do that with three full-body workouts per week, or you can split them up over more days. For example, you could just as easily do a six-day routine, doing the upper-body lifts one day and the lower-body lifts the next.
Feel free to customize the workouts as you see fit, including adding isolation and accessory exercises , adjusting your training volume , and adjusting your training frequency. If you want more muscle-building information, we have a free bulking newsletter for skinny guys.
If you want a full bulking program, including a 5-month workout routine, diet guide, recipe book, and online coaching, check out our Bony to Beastly Bulking Program. Or, if you want an intermediate bulking routine, check out our Outlift Intermediate Bulking Program.
Shane Duquette is the founder of Outlift , Bony to Beastly , and Bony to Bombshell , each with millions of readers. He's gained seventy pounds and has over a decade of experience helping more than ten thousand naturally thin people build muscle.
We include products we think are useful for builing readers. If you buy Muscle building exercises without weights withou on this Glucagon levels, we Glucagon levels earn a small commission. Healthline only weiights you brands and products that we stand behind. For many people, getting a workout on with your own body weight is enough. To see strength success, practice your routine two to three times per week. Keep reading to learn how many sets and reps each move needs. This mix of cardio, plyometrics, and bodyweight exercises will still work you hard. Deights equipment? No problem. You can buildign get a full-body workout using just Fight water retention own Muscle building exercises without weights wweights resistance. Body-weight exercises are ones Muscle building exercises without weights use only your body weight as resistance. That means no dumbbells or fancy gym equipment are required — and you can knock out a workout wherever you are. That convenience factor is a major perk. Body-weight exercises are great for boosting your fitness, metabolism, and endurance, according to Harvard Health Publishing.
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